old man painter research

Looking at images and trying to develop a character!





In particular I'm using these photos as references for how to draw age in characters, where the wrinkles should go, their fashion sense and expressions.

Of these, the final picture is the type of character I want.. Need to try a few more sketch tests with him in mind.

initial sketches and ideas page;



To improve these I'm going to continue looking at the above photos and try to improve the outfit and the style I've drawn it in, keeping in mind I should try not to overcomplicate it as I did in my last project :D

Industry Exercises 2

This is the first post of my new project brief - industry exercises 2!

So far we have not been able to have any lessons for it at college because of the snow. I have already started my project however, and hope that this coming Wednesday I will be able to present it to my tutor, get feedback and then develop it as best I can!

So the brief...

"you must choose a short clip from a film and
composite in your own animated character, props or buildings. Perhaps you
feel that Four Weddings and A Funeral would have been better if there had
been more gorillas in it. Or that Titanic would have been better with
giant sea monsters. This is your chance to put things right. The clip you
use must, when composited, show at least 30 seconds of your own work. Do
not choose any animated films as you will have to match or better the
existing characters in the film. I can guarantee that the animators
working on that film would have had a lot more time than you have for this
project. So keep your choice to a live action film."

Our tutor, Stephen Crocker, has also stated that we can use either 2D or 3D.. and seeing as how I will be doing a lot of 3D work in my 'Digital Environments' project (see my other blog for info on that) I want to use 2D for this! (plus I had a lot of fun with it last time... might try and use Toonboom rather than Flash this time so I get a feel for different software).

I've watched a few films and television programmes over the past couple weeks in preparation;
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
Harry Potter 4
It Could Happen To You
Forest Gump
28 Days Later
Singing In The Rain

I picked these because I enjoy them and because they are all from different genres.
By process of elimination I want to either choose 'Singing In The Rain' or 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest'. These two don't have many special effects in them because they were made quite a few years ago and so animation might look better in comparison to films like Harry Potter which are full of special effects or Forest Gump where no good 'animation' moments jumped out at me.


My ideas so far...

This is the extract from 'Singing In The Rain';



I want to animated an eldery painter in the background getting bothered by their dancing and/or joining in!


And here's the extract from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest' (couldn't find a youtube version without commentary so feel free to mute);



Since most of the characters in this film are 'crazy' I thought I could animate random animals or strange creatures that are part of their imagination.


I'm going to make a couple of brief storyboards for each idea and then pick which one.
For the moment, my main animation idea is to have it in the style of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' so I will watch that film again as well for reference...



Hope to post up some of my storyboards soon, so until then!

Christmas Project Take 2

I'm a complete sucker for music and good music videos so when I saw Shynola on Jared's email list I clicked and was pleasantly surprised. For starters, Shynola isn't one person, it is a group of four visual artists from London who collaborate on music videos and other such projects. They also don't just stick to one medium and specialise in both 2D and 3D. The first video by them I found was 2D and created in flash (unless I'm mistaken.. if not flash then a similar program).


Strange, for sure, but since I want to become better at using flash I can learn a lot from the techniques they used.

Next I followed an adjoining link to another music video he directed by U.N.K.L.E. called 'An Eye for An Eye' which was weird to say the least..

but the use of camera moves and the 3D animation was awesome. Especially how everything tied in to the music and the designs of the creatures.

Finally, as I was researching Shynola using search engines I discovered they had completed a music video for one of my favourite bands - Coldplay. I had little trouble finding the animation on youtube.


I can only place the trailer for the video here as embedding was forbidden on the actual video, but here's a link to it; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYtk1Z0UUu
Anyway, it showed that they were also adapt in stop-motion animation, and combined it efficiently with 2D and in some places 3D... animation and coldplay, what a great combo :D

Looking at their work, it really makes me want to create music videos of my own, and perhaps I will over the next few weeks that I have off and beyond. There is little I can find that I dislike about Shynola, except maybe some of the concepts in their work to do with more carnal pleasures.. (I guess I'm still a bit of a child at heart, but I really don't like sex scenes and the like. It's not just Shynola but I'm using their video as an example here).

Anyway, mostly great stuff.

Christmas Project

I've always felt that backgrounds where a weakness of mine when it came to drawing, and especially with regards to perspective, which is why for Jared's project I've started by researching Piranesi, an Italian etcher, archaeologist and architect (4 October 1720 – 9 November 1778).



There is so much detail in his sketches that you really get a feel for the place he is drawing, the atmosphere. It's also interesting to me because most of his work is set around the 1740s and so is quite different from the environments we are used to seeing today. Seeing his images makes me want to attempt a picture set in a different time period so that I can experiment at drawing different types of buildings and clothes so that I have a wider range to choose from in my head.

The only problem I find with his work is that because they are etchings there is no colour to them, and seeing the colour palette used by different artists helps me broaden my own range.



Over the next few weeks I have made it a goal of mine to experiment in other artists styles more, if I successfully manage to achieve something similar to Piranesi's style I will post it in another entry.

If you have trouble viewing any of the images, click on them to go to the original site they are linked from.

completion

To see the version of my idents without the addition of sound click here.

I'm not sure whether they work better with or without sound but I've done it both ways just in case. If this was a professional job I would let the castle choose after I'd shown them both versions.

With that I have completed my brief and accomplished what I set out to do. To those reading this I hope you enjoy the final result. :)

idents with sound

I've attempted to add sound to the idents using soundtracks I found on iMovie and from the Ren and Stimpy soundtrack.







I'm not sure whether I like this use of sound though and will put up the version without sound shortly and make a proper decision then.

reflection

I have now completed all six of my idents and have kept in accordance with my schedule.

I would like the idents to either be on the website for Warwick Castle (as loading screens perhaps) or on monitors around the site between important snatches of information about the castle for visitors. They might even work as adverts during children's television if I find the right soundtrack to go with it.

The things that remain to think about are the use of sound as well as the evaluation of my project from the beginning brief and the application of any necessary changes;


stills from each of my six idents

--

I began this brief with quite a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve; six 5 second idents promoting the summer activities of Warwick Castle aimed at children, but the process of getting to this result was quite turmulent.

I wanted to challenge myself so I chose to create the idents in a programme I was quite unfamiliar with but wanted to get better at; Adobe Flash. This led to a lot of problems especially with the 'actionscript' trying to create water effects, using the 'tween' tool and just getting to grips with all the functions.

I feel like I do know the program a lot better now; whenever I was stuck I either asked for advice from a fellow classmate (notably Dean Pankhurst and Steven Pender who have both previously used the program before this course) or I sought online help and tutorials from professionals like Maxwell Langdon.

The style of the idents was also a problem as first I wanted to create it similar to the ending animation of Bolt (see the first blog entry to view it), but animating without lines was a little tricky so I soon sought other inspiration and found it at the HAFF animation festival and through youtube videos. I think the style and vibrant colours I chose will attract the target audience to my animations.

I paced myself well with the project and have finished a week ahead of schedule so that I can get feedback and improve it if need be. I can't imagine how I could have completed this project with more success, I've tried my best with all aspects of it.

The one area I feel I am weakest in is the initial designing stage. Often I rush my ideas so that I can get started as soon as possible since I panic at the thought of deadlines! Going back it might be worthwhile re-thinking a few of the ideas and seeing if I can get them any more original or interesting.

Finally, comparing this work to the industry-standard out there I feel as though I still have a long way to go in terms of drawing skill and using flash to its fullest potential. There were no very interesting camera angles in my work and some of the animation was a little robotic because I didn't have time to dynamically animate everything. I would also be part of a team in the industry and wouldn't have to go through the process by myself so that could be solved later on. I feel the time frame I had was adequate and working a few hours a day really paid off instead of intensely working on it during one short period of time.

I really enjoyed working on this project and want to continue using flash in the future, it is a really inventive program and I feel I have not yet lived up to my animation potential using it, but this is as good a start as any.